Agricultural development through crop diversification, irrigation, high yielding crop varieties, and public investments in infrastructure has improved food security and its seasonal dimension worldwide in recent years. Consequently, the severity of seasonal hunger caused by agricultural crop cycles has lessened substantially. Yet in agricultural pockets scattered throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, seasonal hunger persists, especially among the rural poor, owing primarily to idiosyncratic shocks caused by agricultural seasonality. More than four-fifths of the world's poor live in rural...

Sub-Saharan Africa has only 12 percent of the global population, yet this region accounts for 50 percent of child deaths, more than 60 percent of maternal deaths, 85 percent of malaria cases, and close to 67 percent of people living with HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa, however, has the lowest number of health workers in the world-significantly fewer than in South Asia, which is at a comparable level of economic development. The Labor Market for Health Workers in Africa uses the analytical tools of labor markets to examine the human resource crisis in health from an economic perspective. Africa's...

The current distribution of power markets around intermediate structures that fall between the two extremes of full integration and unbundling suggests that there has not been a linear path to power market structure reform. Rather, many developing countries may retain intermediate structures into the foreseeable future. This possibility exposes a gap in the understanding of power market structures, since most theoretical work has focused on the two extreme possibilities and there is limited evidence of the impact of unbundling for developing countries. Power Market Structure takes a novel...

African exporters suffer from low survival rates on international markets. They fail more often than others, incurring time and again the setup costs involved in starting new relationships. This high churning is a source of waste, uncertainty, and discouragement.

Poorly implemented energy subsidies are economically costly to taxpayers and damage the environment. This report aims at providing the emerging lessons form a representative sample of case studies in 20 developing countries that could help policy makers to address implementation challenges, including overcoming political economy and affordability constraints. The sample has selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including the country's level of development (and consumption), developing country region, energy security and the fuel it subsidies (petroleum fuel, electricity, natural...

In China, despite the introduction of economic reforms that have lifted millions out of poverty, the income gap between rural and urban areas remains wide. There is a growing realization in policy circles that economic growth alone cannot reduce absolute poverty and inequality, and that investment in human development is needed to sustain growth and improve social cohesion. Prepared as a collaborative study between the World Bank and China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, Early Child Development in China: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Improving Future Competitiveness...

Ghana is one of only several African countries to enact legislation and earmark financing for universal health insurance coverage for its entire population. Seven years into its implementation the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has made significant progress in transitioning to universal coverage, but faces significant fiscal and coverage challenges. This study reviews Ghana's health financing system with a special emphasis on its National Health Insurance Scheme. Such an assessment is important because Ghana is often considered a global 'good practice' in terms of earmarking...

The unprecedented rise in world oil prices over the past decade has created greater economic uncertainty and higher risk introduced by oil price volatility. Countries with a high proportion of oil in their primary energy supply are especially vulnerable. At both macro and micro levels, such countries may suffer serious effects, ranging from short-term to permanent changes that hinder potential growth and international competitiveness. Mitigating Vulnerability to High and Volatile Oil Prices: Power Sector Experience in Latin America and the Caribbean offers an assessment of how these countries...

This book provides insights into infrastructure sector performance by focusing on the links between key indicators for utilities, and changes in ownership, regulatory agency governance, and corporate governance, among other dimensions. By linking inputs and outputs over the last 15 years, the analysis is able to uncover key determinants that have impacted performance and address why the effects of such dimensions resulted in significant changes in the performance of infrastructure service provision.

Nepal: Urban Growth and Spatial Transition carries out an initial assessment of Nepal's urban growth and spatial transformation, with a focus on spatial demographic and economic trends, economic growth drivers and infrastructure requirements of Nepal's urban regions. The book notes that Nepal is the fastest urbanizing country in South Asia. The spatial transformation is characterized by fast growing population density in the Kathmandu Valley - Nepal's largest urban conurbation -, along the main highways and close to the border with India, and clustering of economic production in the Kathmandu...